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NEWS: Amazon Listings Reveal More Tokyopop Licenses




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Hon'ya-chan



Joined: 31 Jul 2007
Posts: 973
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 3:45 pm Reply with quote
Gee, and just a few months ago, they were struggling and canceling titles left and right. What gives?
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erilot



Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Posts: 25
Location: INDIANA
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:01 pm Reply with quote
I also have to wonder, they have cancelled and postponed titles, yet are getting more licenses when they can't even keep up with the ones they have. This makes me a bit upset since there were many titles I have been collecting and I have been made to wait longer. I pretty much give up on keeping up on my series, every few months I will do a binge buying spree to see what is out there, but that is about it. I am very depressed with the current manga market, so many delays and cancellations.

Perhaps I should buy more DVD's and less manga now?
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Taiyz



Joined: 16 Aug 2005
Posts: 202
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:23 pm Reply with quote
erilot wrote:
I am very depressed with the current manga market, so many delays and cancellations.

Perhaps I should buy more DVD's and less manga now?
Support the one that you believe deserves your money. Personally I'm quite ticked with Tokyopop as of late, so I have been buying the series' I like from other publishers, for example. This of course has its limits...I'm not dedicated enough to flat-out boycott them until I get what I was waiting for.

I think it's quite amusing, though; the DVD industry was looking kinda grim for a while, and then FUNimation just started dominating everything; a boon to many fans, everywhere. Now the manga industry is running into issues across the board. It's kinda sad, though.
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slickwataris



Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 1334
Location: Carol Stream, Illinois
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 4:39 pm Reply with quote
At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

No Beck, no care.
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RadicaLElly



Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 194
Location: Coral Springs, FL
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 10:10 pm Reply with quote
It seems like the problem the industry has in general is that many companies can't get around the idea that quantity =/= quality. There was a time when the US fandom was smaller, particularly in regards to internet presence, so fans were trying out series more by trial and error rather than by word of mouth. Few had access to fansubs and scanlations to go by so what the industry made available was, for the most part, all there was. That's since changed though and much of the industry is failing to keep up.

Based on this and the fact that around the mid-late 90s/early 2000s Tokyopop was virtually uncontested in regards to the US manga market, the strategy of licensing as many titles as they possibly could seemed to be working. The same could be said in regards to ADV and the anime home video market. But if Tokyopop doesn't smarten up soon then they'll be surpassed and eventually find themselves falling just as far.

That's just my two cents though.
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idrisfynn



Joined: 04 Jul 2005
Posts: 17
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:39 am Reply with quote
Whatever else has been going on with Tokyopop, I am thrilled that Zone-00 is getting released! I picked it up in Tokyo a couple of years ago and I'd completely given up on seeing it translated.

It's not too much of an investement for TP, it's only a two volume set.
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irishninja



Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 344
Location: Seattle-ish
PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:27 am Reply with quote
One thing to keep in mind, and this comes from personal experience dealing with Amazon through the publishing industry, is that just because Amazon lists something for future release doesn't mean the product will even exist. Amazon is notorious (at least in some publishing circles) for putting up products LONG before any final (or sometimes even official) information is available and for being slow to change their listings when more information is made available.

In other words, just because Amazon says it will be so doesn't necessarily mean it will be so.
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:48 am Reply with quote
irishninja wrote:
One thing to keep in mind, and this comes from personal experience dealing with Amazon through the publishing industry, is that just because Amazon lists something for future release doesn't mean the product will even exist. Amazon is notorious (at least in some publishing circles) for putting up products LONG before any final (or sometimes even official) information is available and for being slow to change their listings when more information is made available.

In other words, just because Amazon says it will be so doesn't necessarily mean it will be so.


Yeah. I keep checking for Brimstone & they say I can sign up to be notified when/if it's ever available. We did finally get Student Bodies & I picked up Quark last night (I thought everyone had forgotten that one.)

I still say this is along the lines of Cyborg 009, Gatekeepers, etc, where the titles underperformed & were dropped before they finished. They're trying to soften the blow by saying they're all just "postponed so please keep buying our other titles", but I really don't expect to see these cancelled titles. It was really, really, really insane that a handful at least were only 1 or 2 volumes away from completion so it would seem more fan-friendly to simply print those last couple volumes (I believe Liling Po, Queen's Knight, Satisfaction Guaranteed & BTx fit this mode). Maybe print smaller runs, but just finish them off.
If you look at the titles announced, they seem pretty similar. Frankly, I've grown weary of generic shojo titles & to think I may never see the end of Queen's Knight & BTx JUST so Tokyo Pop can appeal to the fans of generic shojo titles just really makes me cautious about trusting them on any new titles. I'm very much in "finish what I'm reading of Tokyo Pop" mode other than the Blu & BL stuff. (This is also some of my weariness with TP--all the barely hinted BL stuff being released in the TP line. I don't trust any of it any longer unless I can find a source that ID'd it as BL. I'll take undercurrents like Saiyuki)

They did say at Comic-con in 2007 they were looking at shorter titles-not really longer than 7 volumes. That probably should have been a warning they were disappointed in the selling power of longer titles. I also feel it shows they really don't have an accurate gauge on what will sell & what won't so 7 volumes cuts their losses faster. For my money, a lot of stories don't really get good until Vol 3 or 4, so a title that ends in 2 volumes is just that much more easy to forget. 2-4 volumes is barely time to scratch beneath the surface of the characters.

They did say they were also shutting these titles down to launch an entertainment/movie/tv branch & we are seeing more licenses attached to American entertainment.
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ArielTsuki



Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 178
PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 3:57 pm Reply with quote
idrisfynn wrote:
Whatever else has been going on with Tokyopop, I am thrilled that Zone-00 is getting released! I picked it up in Tokyo a couple of years ago and I'd completely given up on seeing it translated.

It's not too much of an investement for TP, it's only a two volume set.


Actually it's an ongoing series with 4 volumes out right now, it's not released regularly like a majority of manga it seems since I got the first three and they all came out at the same time.
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idrisfynn



Joined: 04 Jul 2005
Posts: 17
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:49 am Reply with quote
ArielTsuki wrote:
Actually it's an ongoing series with 4 volumes out right now, it's not released regularly like a majority of manga it seems since I got the first three and they all came out at the same time.


I realized I'd gotten that wrong after I logged off for the night but could't be arsed to come back just to fix it.

I bought the first two volumes as a shrinkwrapped set in some shop in Ikebukuro (down the street from the Animate) almost two years ago and that's all that came to mind when I saw the announcement. The cover art I'm seeing for Zone 00 right now are not the same as the ones I got... and my publish date says 2/5/2005 for vol 1 and 2/5/2006 for vol 2. So it's coming out a volume per year? hmmmm.
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